The Department of Secondary and Elementary Education has made some changes to the way school boards make the school calendar, and these changes could affect RHS students.

DESE has changed the way in which schools base their calendars, from days to hours. In the old system, schools had to go 174 days or 142 days with 1044 hours in student attendance. Aaron Zalis said that there was “no wiggle room” with the old system.

The new system changes the minimum time schools must be in session to 1044 hours, giving schools the chance to be a little more flexible.

The school’s Calendar Committee met on Nov. 1 to discuss these changes made by DESE and how they could use it to the school’s advantage.

“[The thing we looked at was] can we make the same amount of time and use it better,” Zalis said.

One way to do that is to eliminate late start Wednesday’s and the half days for teacher development. All of those meetings combined equal five days of school with no student attendance.

Instead of those cumulative five days, the committee is looking at the possibility of having staff development days once a month on a Friday, guaranteeing that students have a three day weekend once a month, and that they will get that time off.

This would create a sense of stability and would help students would “know exactly when [they] are off,” Zalis said.

The school district “doesn’t [want] to change a lot for students,” Zalis said. They don’t want to look backwards, and the committee is “here to serve parents and students,” Zalis said.

The committee is looking at the Springfield school district calendar as to what they want next year and the years after, but they’re still undecided.

“I haven’t landed anywhere,” Zalis said.